Skip to content
The Catholic Leader
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
The Catholic Leader
No Result
View All Result
Home People Despatch from a Dominican

Confirmation is not about being ready, it is a gift of transformative grace, writes Br Sebastian Condon

byBr Sebastian Condon
23 October 2020
Reading Time: 5 mins read
AA

Pandemic confirmations: Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, poses for a group photo July 26, 2020, after confirmations at San Felipe de Jesus Parish. A group of 13 Catholic youth received the sacrament of confirmation as parts of Texas were undergoing a hurricane threat amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
Pandemic confirmations: Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, poses for a group photo July 26, 2020, after confirmations at San Felipe de Jesus Parish. A group of 13 Catholic youth received the sacrament of confirmation as parts of Texas were undergoing a hurricane threat amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Due to the pandemic earlier this year, the confirmations in our parish were postponed.

As a result, I have recently had to serve at several confirmation Masses, and have heard many theories among the assembled families as to what confirmation, as a sacrament, actually signifies.

Many of these theories are interesting – some are simply mistaken.

When I asked certain children and their parents how they would describe confirmation, many responded with the words, “it is the sacrament of maturity or commitment”.

It appears that this understanding is related to the fact that confirmation is, in many places, the last sacrament of initiation received.

It is also often the last time we see those confirmed ever darken the door of a church.

Moreover, there is an express period of catechesis and examination that proceeds the administration of the sacrament, placing much emphasis on the “readiness” of the candidate to be confirmed, as well as their now “adult choice” to take up their Christian calling.

And this is precisely where the understanding of confirmation goes astray.

As a note, it is worth pointing out that when Pope St Pius X lowered the age at which children could receive Holy Communion in 1910, he had no intention of otherwise interfering with the order in which the sacraments were received.

Yet the unforeseen consequence was to leave children experiencing full participation in the Eucharist without having received the sacrament which is necessarily prior to it in the very grammar and logic of the three sacraments of initiation themselves; baptism and confirmation being “ordered to the Eucharist […] the centre and goal of all sacramental life”. (Benedict XVI)

Having acknowledged this fact, we can move to an examination of the distinct theological character of confirmation.

Thomas Aquinas certainly states that the grace received in the sacrament is directed towards “growing and maturing in holiness”. (ST IIIa, q. 72, art. 7, ad.1)

However, he also explicitly links the sacrament to the event of Pentecost, strengthening those to be confirmed just as the apostles were once strengthened. (ST IIIa, q. 72, art. 8)

Thus, as our young confirmandi were so ready to relate, it is true that the sacrament concerns the gift of “spiritual strength which is proper to maturity”. (ST IIIa, q. 72, art. 2)

Pentecost: The scriptural witness of Pentecost testifies to the apostles being a huddled group of terrified, unreceptive individuals who are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit into fearless evangelists and martyrs for Christ. (Acts 2; John 20)

The Second Vatican Council also took up the same language and theme of Pentecost when it spoke of those confirmed as being endowed “with special strength so that they are more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith, both by word and by deed, as true witnesses of Christ”. (Lumen Gentium, 11)

Thus confirmation, as a visible sign of invisible grace, is clearly intended to be the sacramental manifestation of the propulsive force of Pentecost upon the lives of the apostles and those who follow in the apostolic faith.

And as a direct result of this conclusion, confirmation clearly has nothing to do with the learned readiness, “maturity” or “choice” of the person to be confirmed.

The scriptural witness of Pentecost testifies to the apostles being a huddled group of terrified, unreceptive individuals who are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit into fearless evangelists and martyrs for Christ. (Acts 2; John 20)

They were demonstrably unsuited and unready for the lives and task before them; the grace necessary was given to them by God as a gift.

If confirmation is the sacramental manifestation of that reality, then the readiness – whether through catechesis, personal choice or otherwise – of the human person to receive the grace on offer is not ultimately the issue.

Confirmation is a sacramental sign of the transformative power of God which is overshadowed whenever emphasis is placed on the “maturity” or “choice” of the candidate.

As Monsignor Paul McPartlan quite rightly says, all of the sacraments are “free, unmerited gifts to us”.

Pentecost was not a sign that mankind had suddenly become more receptive to the workings of God but that, in Christ, mankind is now made receptive to grace in a degree previously unimagined.

What happened on that day – and what thus happens with each sacramental celebration of that reality – is a proclamation of the fact that, as Dominican Father Liam Walsh puts it, “the time for pedagogues and being led by the hand and childish religion is ended. The régime of grace has come of age.”

It is in that regard that confirmation is a sacrament of Christian maturity – in grace.

It has demonstrably little to do with the readiness of the person to choose to receive it, a theological reality that is evidenced by the fact that an infant in danger of death can be confirmed. (CIC, c. 889, § 2)

Real presence: Pope Francis elevates the Eucharist as he celebrates Mass on the feast of Corpus Christi outside the Basilica of St John Lateran in Rome. Photo: CNS

Confirmation certainly concerns our maturity and identity as Christians, but it is our identity as new creatures of grace, not our identity as we choose it or confect it.

It is a sacramental “confirmation” of the fact that existence as a member of the Mystical Body of Christ necessarily entails a proclamation of the Gospel in whatever form that may take, as the words of Lumen Gentium imply.

Moreover, there is an inherent danger that conceiving confirmation as a “mature choice” or an elected “commitment” places more emphasis on the candidate and his or her ability to once more engage in the modern penchant for a chronic consumerist reinvention of the self, rather than the mysterious workings of God in grace.

In reviewing the inherent theology of confirmation, it is apparent – in the words of Dominican Father Austin P. Milner– that “confirmation is not and has never been a sacrament of commitment: it is the sacrament of the mystery of Pentecost”.

Overlooking this fact raises the danger of conveying a distorted idea of Christianity and of confirmation, precisely because framing confirmation as a “choice” made in Christian “maturity” seems to emphasise a sense of pelagian self-perfectibility over the mysterious workings of grace.

If that is the final catechetical message children receive, it is little wonder that they thereafter abandon the Church.

Related Stories

Q&A – What happens if your Baptism was invalid?

Social services workers and vulnerable people need ready access to rapid antigen tests, Vinnies says

Meet the Ipswich teenagers making God part of their lives

ShareTweet
Previous Post

Labor and LNP quizzed on post-COVID strategies in online election debate

Next Post

Meet the people who serve the forgotten front-line workers delivering your daily goods out at sea

Br Sebastian Condon

Related Posts

Q&A – What happens if your Baptism was invalid?
Faith

Q&A – What happens if your Baptism was invalid?

24 February 2022
Testing woes: Shortages in the supply of rapid antigen tests is causing chaos for people needing a quick test result. Photo: CNS
QLD

Social services workers and vulnerable people need ready access to rapid antigen tests, Vinnies says

5 January 2022
Celebration: Ipswich Catholic Community welcomes 19 teenagers into the flock.
QLD

Meet the Ipswich teenagers making God part of their lives

8 October 2021
Next Post

Meet the people who serve the forgotten front-line workers delivering your daily goods out at sea

Catholic psychologist Paul Stevenson says mental health impact of COVID-19 could last years

Indigenous community in far north Queensland says euthanasia is against Aboriginal culture

Popular News

  • Performer: Liza is a trained gymnast and contortionist and has enjoyed performing at St Eugene College.

    Young Ukrainian performer settles into new life in Brisbane school

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Abdallah family deliver powerful Vatican speech

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Catholics need better understanding of the Mass, Pope says in follow-up letter to Traditionis Custodes

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Fr El Louie Jimenez ordained

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Fr Josh braves ‘freezing’ June night to raise awareness for homelessness at Vinnies Sleepout

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
Search our job finder
No Result
View All Result

Latest News

Plenary task: “Reveal the face of Christ”
News

Australian Plenary Council aims to avert Church ‘moment of crisis’

by Mark Bowling
30 June 2022
0

LEADING Catholics say decisions made at the second assembly of the Plenary Council next week – could...

Man of faith: Newly-ordained priest Fr El Louie Jiminez with Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge at St Stephen's Cathedral on June 29. Photos: Alan Edgecomb / Purple Moon Photography

Fr El Louie Jimenez ordained

30 June 2022
Braving the cold: Caloundra Unity College Principal Daniel McShea ,Our Lady of the Rosary College Principal Dr Michael Stewart and Caloundra priest Fr Joshua Whitehead.

Fr Josh braves ‘freezing’ June night to raise awareness for homelessness at Vinnies Sleepout

30 June 2022
Catholics need better understanding of the Mass, Pope says in follow-up letter to Traditionis Custodes

Catholics need better understanding of the Mass, Pope says in follow-up letter to Traditionis Custodes

30 June 2022
Performer: Liza is a trained gymnast and contortionist and has enjoyed performing at St Eugene College.

Young Ukrainian performer settles into new life in Brisbane school

29 June 2022

Never miss a story. Sign up to the Weekly Round-Up
eNewsletter now to receive headlines directly in your email.

Sign up to eNews
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Jobs
  • Subscribe

The Catholic Leader is an Australian award-winning Catholic newspaper that has been published by the Archdiocese of Brisbane since 1929. Our journalism seeks to provide a full, accurate and balanced Catholic perspective of local, national and international news while upholding the dignity of the human person.

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader
Accessibility Information | Privacy Policy | Archdiocese of Brisbane

The Catholic Leader acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the First Peoples of this country and especially acknowledge the traditional owners on whose lands we live and work throughout the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader

0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyChoose another Subscription
    Continue Shopping